Syrian rebel Em Joseph
ABU DUHOOR, Syria — Em Joseph doesn’t really look like many of the women in this socially conservative stretch of Syria‘s Idlib province, and she certainly doesn’t act like them. Instead of the traditional hijab, or headscarf, worn by women in the area, her head and the lower part of her face are wrapped in a red-and-white keffiyeh in the manner that a man (or a woman working in the fields) might wear the garment.
She carries two grenades, one in the left breast pocket of her blue-and-gray military camouflage vest, the other in the same pocket of the men’s leather jacket she wears over the vest. Perhaps her only concession to femininity is the pattern of maroon and creme swirls on her loose, floor-length beige robe, but if it weren’t for the swirls, the garment could easily be a man’s galabiya. And then, there’s her Kalashnikov rifle.
Full dispatch here.